300 Microsoft Employees Attend 3 Day Envisioning Future Data Center offsite

I didn't believe it when I heard it, but someone else confirmed. Microsoft had a 3 day 300 attendee event to Envision the Future Data Center, hosted by their Data Center Services group who operates and builds all Microsoft's data centers. MS Research had 60 attendees which is good to hear, and I guess we can look forward to more content like this.

That amount of brain power spending 3 days on data center issues is mind boggling. We could speculate on what they would talk about, but you can imagine with Windows, Microsoft IT, Management Tools, Exchange, SQL, Research, Search, MSN, Windows Live, and Data Center Operations all getting together to discuss how data centers could be different there were a lot of ideas no one else has tried.

I bet you if Microsoft opened the offsite to the public they could charge $2,000 each to attend. Maybe even $5,000.

Is Microsoft a new force changing data center design? If Microsoft does buy Yahoo, they will be the biggest data center operator. We all read about Google's data centers, but I don't think we can say they are changing how data centers are built as they don't give tours and share their operations. Microsoft has started to share parts of what they do, and we can hope they share more.

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Green Data Center Event in Ottawa

A Green Data Center event is scheduled for Jan 24 in Ottawa.

ITAC and Natural Resources Canada to Hold an Executive Round Table About Energy Efficient Data Centers

Event to showcase best practices for reducing power consumption, reducing environmental impacts and advancing effective public policy.

The Information Technology Association of Canada (ITAC), with the participation of Natural Resources Canada, will host an executive round table to highlight issues concerning energy efficient data centers.

The event is open to IT executives from public and private organizations with a presence in Canada.  Join us on Thursday, January 24, 2008, from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. at the Fairmont Château Laurier in Ottawa, Ontario. 

Trends regarding the energy consumption of Canadian data centers and international efforts to reduce data center power consumption will be presented. Experts from Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD), Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP), Nortel Networks, and VMware, Inc. will highlight new technologies and best-practices case studies for improving data center energy efficiency. Natural Resources Canada will provide the Government of Canada's perspective on this important issue and Andrew Fanara, EPA, will present on global trends in government-industry collaboration for improving data center efficiency.

For more information and to register, go to the ITAC Web site at https://secure.e-RegisterNow.com/cgi-bin/mkpayment.cgi?MID=280&state=step2direct&event=310807015696087

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Green Grid Technical Forum

Green Grid announced their technical forum. I don't know if I'll go, or just talk to a bunch of people who went and get their impression. Or better yet, talk to the guys who are going to present and find out what they plan on presenting. As many events, it is probably worth going if you want to network with the other attendees.

The Green Grid Technical Forum

Get Connected...Assess Today for Efficiency Tomorrow!

Parc 55 Hotel
55 Cyril Magnin Street
San Francisco, CA
February 5-6, 2008

Overview

An unprecedented opportunity to "Get Connected to Efficient IT", The Green Grid Technical Forum is a unique industry event designed to bring members and other industry stakeholders together to further The Green Grid’s mission of advancing energy efficiency in data centers and business computing ecosystems.  Attendees will learn about The Green Grid’s Data Center Metrics, current and emerging techniques for managing data centers for efficiency and future technical deliverables from the organization.  The Green Grid will also host discussions with leading industry policy-makers from around the world.

Registration

Members can visit The Green Grid Technical Forum Web page to register for this event.

Interested in attending The Green Grid Technical Forum, but not a member of The Green Grid?  Non-members can register by going to the web site.

It looks like it will be hard for non-members to attend.  Here is my response from their registration system.

Thank you for your interest in participating in The Green Grid Technical Forum.  At this time, registration is open to members only.  We will contact you as soon as registration opens to non-members.

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Green Data Centre Panel Discussion

Well, we succesfully presented best scoring panel presentation at IT forum.  For those attendees who attended IT forum, you'll be able to listen to the discussion and how the panel picked on Mike Manos. :-) We didn't have the Jerry Springer moment, but the conversation was lively.

As the moderator, I couldn't ask for a better group of guys to kick off this discussion at IT Forum.  Kevin Sangwell from Microsoft did a great job of recruiting speakers for the event.

The comments tell the story.

  • very good, hardware vendors, chip manufacturers, large companies able to demonstrate what they are doing to reduce the carbon footprint....however it appears microsoft are not doing very much to reduce this footprint! Lets see some commitement from MS.....such as supporting/promoting competitors virtualiastion products.
  • I felt that this format for a session was very progressive and interactive. Unfortunately, the discussion was sidelined a few times and I didn't think the session had enough time to run its course.
  • Good session. Should have been longer
  • Dissapointed that this was the only coverage at ITForum, I would have liked to here something about Microsoft's strategy for solving power consumption in good software design.
  • This was a very good session. I would have liked to continue it but we ran out of time. I got a lot of usefull information.
See http://unthrottled.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!3B07BABB3D3318AA!580.entry for Mike Manos' post.

Abstract:

The spiralling cost and environmental impact of data centres is driving some in the industry to design Green data centres. This panel includes representatives from hardware and software vendors plus data centre managers who will share their insight, debate the relative merits of going Green and share the lessons from early adoption.

Speakers:
  • Mr Kevin Sangwell - Microsoft
  • Mr Nigel Bridgeman - HP
  • Mr Michael Manos - Microsoft Data Centers
  • Mr Ed English - Dell
  • Mr Dave Ohara - Green M3
  • Mr Kevin O'Donovan - Intel
  • Mr Harvey Cobbold - Citi Data Centers
  • Mr Ramon Huesa - AMD
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